


Louder Than Bombs

by Onefalsestep



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Song Lyrics, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-24 02:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9695891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onefalsestep/pseuds/Onefalsestep
Summary: After leaving Mary, John moves back into 221B, and promptly spends his first afternoon as a single man getting drunk. Alone. While listening to the Smiths. Which stirs some unsettling revelations: why does Sherlock keep crossing his mind as the scotch sets in? And why do all of the lyrics Morrissey croons seem like cryptic references to the detective, to the man whose mind John still can't puzzle out, even after all this time? Set after S3. AU.





	1. There Is A Light

**Author's Note:**

> I've always wanted to mash up Sherlock and the Smiths (possible band name?), and I'd strongly recommend pairing your reading of this fic with the soundtrack of the album John's listening to, which you can hear for free on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1j57Q5ntVi7crpibb0h4sv

He moved back into 221B Baker Street long before the divorce papers were finalized. Mary didn’t even ask where he was going. She helped him pack and deal with the movers, and then said goodbye at the door, looking as though she didn’t hold it against him in the least. “Best of luck, love,” she said, with one last peck on the cheek. And just like that he walked away, into his old life, as the confirmed bachelor at Sherlock Holmes’ side, with presumably just as bleak a dating record ahead of him as the one he’d left behind when he’d married Mary Morstan.

Sherlock knew John and Mary were getting divorced long before John did: he managed to keep his deduction to himself until the morning they decided to make it official. John went to the bathroom after an hour or so of comforting Mary to find a text, signed with those familiar initials: “Back to 221B tomorrow, I presume?”

He’d gripped the phone, about to shoot back some caustic reply about Sherlock’s disregard for people’s feelings: and then stopped, sighing. Sherlock was offering him a home. He was lucky enough that someone out there cared about the exact moment his marriage came to end, and gave him a place to go that wasn’t a sad little bedsit, or a hotel, or an acquaintance’s couch. He’d be going home: and that was okay with him. _Yes_ , he texted back. _See you tomorrow_.

Sherlock was on a case while John put the pieces of his life back together in their shared flat: a case he didn’t need John for, some minor matter Mycroft put him on involving the vetting of a diplomat’s alibi, a sex scandal in Seoul, and, for reasons John failed to fathom, hours of research on the migratory pattern of the Mandarin duck. He greeted John with a nod as John carried his boxes back in, but offered no help, disappearing down the stairs without a word soon after John appeared, leaving a trail of fine cologne in his wake.

“So it’s a ‘not talking for days on end’ phase, is it?” John called after him. Silence answered him. “Great.”

He spent the next few hours unpacking, rearranging the upstairs bedroom and trying to restore some order in the kitchen, to little avail. Folding his clothes and disposing of the empty boxes took up most of his time: he still traveled light, even after building a life with Mary. They weren’t big on gifts, and she’d kept the flat, of course. He didn’t care about the furniture, though he did take the posh record player Greg had gotten them as a wedding present. 221B had everything else he needed.

He did, however, have a box from Harry. She’d dropped it off a month or two before, in one of her sporadic efforts to spark some kind of familial affection between them. They’d had a tense cup of tea, and she’d taken off once John had sussed out whether she was still drinking (she was) and whether she was still leading Clara on with no intention of ever returning (that too). He’d mostly given up on the idea of them ever reconciling when she’d missed the wedding. The message there was fairly clear.

The box looked like it had been shoved in the back of a closet for years, with caved-in edges and signs of water damage dotting its sides. John regarded it for a moment, considering whether to open it at all: who knew if Harry had even looked inside? She said she’d been hanging onto it ever since she’d cleaned out their parents’ old house with the intention of getting it to John, but it might contain nothing more than tchotchkes and towels, for all Harry probably knew.

He ran a knife along the slit, flicking off the tape, and pulled some wadded up paper out from its top. Beneath, he found records: a crate of them, weathered but fine. He pulled one out, and laughed. “All right, Harry.” He shook his head. Not just junk after all, but a collection of John’s records from secondary school. He thought his mum had thrown them all out long ago, but here was _Hatful of Hollow_ , the Smiths compilation album he’d played incessantly in the mid-eighties, at least until Harry threatened to break it in half and throw it out the window.

Gray light cut across the living room, lengthening the afternoon into evening. John glanced around at the odds and ends left to arrange, the tidying up to do, and decided: _Sod it_. Sherlock wouldn’t care, or even notice, if John left things a bit of a mess. He’d just left his wife. He deserved a drink, and some time to himself to unwind.

He dug some scotch out from the cabinet in the kitchen and found a reasonably clean glass to pour it in before heading to the record player, which he’d set up on the shelves by the mantle. He flipped through the rest of the records—New Order, Orange Juice, Siouxsie and the Banshees—but no, it was the dark, jangly sound of the Smiths he wanted on this bleak afternoon. He pulled out _Hatful of Hollow_ from its worn sleeve and set it on the turntable, dropping the needle. Morrissey’s voice came through clear and liquid, melting the room with his high troubadour’s baritone. _The rain falls hard on a humdrum town/This town has dragged you down/Oh, the rain falls hard on a humdrum town/This town has dragged you down._

He’d only ever admitted it to Harry, but he’d harbored a teenage crush on Morrissey, the brooding poet with the messy dark hair and pale skin who crafted lyrics about love and sex that stirred something in John he’d never quite felt before. John was _not_ gay, as he’d asserted time and time again—but he wasn’t exactly straight, either. He’d kissed men: well, boys, really. By the time he hit twenty-two, it felt like it meant more than just drunken fun and easy companionship, and his parents’ reaction to Harry hadn’t exactly bolstered his desire to explore the subtleties of his own sexuality. He and Sherlock had never talked about it: their early misunderstanding over John’s intentions had created a boundary that John didn’t want to cross, and sex was a topic Sherlock never broached, save for when he was mocking John about porn or ex-girlfriends.

He crossed over to the sofa, stretching out on the leather to sip his scotch and stare at the ceiling. The liquor flowed through him, leaving a mellow, melancholy feeling in its wake. Morissey’s voiced lilted on, carrying John into the darkness as the dusk began to fade. _All men have secrets and here is mine/So let it be known/For we have been through hell and high tide/I think I can rely on you…_

A brief smile crossed his lips. Things weren’t all bad, after all. He could rely on Sherlock. Somehow, always, impossibly. He could rely on Sherlock to do anything John asked him to, even resurrect himself from the dead. He worried sometimes that it was too much: that Sherlock funneled all the care and emotion he should have been processing himself into John, attempting to empty himself, to turn himself into the shell John knew he could never be. What did Sherlock want, really? John longed to walk the halls of his mind palace, to know what mysteries lay in its reaches, what answers he’d unravel by peering in its rooms. He’d often wondered if the fabled mind palace held the key to Sherlock’s demeanor: if he could appear so cold on the outside because he had rooms of warmth hidden away inside his mind, retreats where he could be safe and still and—loved? Did Sherlock care about being loved?

He emptied his glass, and rose to get more scotch, deciding this time to keep the bottle by his side. He settled back on the sofa, taking long sips of the amber liquid, the room turning gold and glowing as night settled in for good. The record spun on, into “These Things Take Time.” _I’m spellbound, oh…but a woman divides. And the hills are alive with celibate cries_. John snorted. Now that—that was too on the nose. He and Mary hadn’t had sex for months, and the tension John felt from that lack was nigh unbearable. He’d always had a high sex drive—hence the string of ex-girlfriends—but it was the other aspects of relationships he’d never quite mastered. Until Mary. And now even Mary was gone.

 _Oh the alcoholic afternoons/When we sat in your rooms/They meant more to me/Than any, than any living thing on earth_. God. Why was he acting like a teenager? Lying around listening to records, horny and angsty and unfulfilled. Must be the divorce, he thought—but no, Mary faded from his mind as he let the sound sweep over him. For whatever reason, memories of Sherlock matched his current mood best: maybe it was because Sherlock reminded him of Morrissey, now that he thought of it. A bit of a misanthrope with foot-in-mouth disease, dulcet-toned, sexually ambiguous—yeah, that was Sherlock all over, and a fact he didn’t want to think about too closely now, considering his long-ago infatuation with Morrissey.

The Smiths slid smoothly into “This Charming Man,” and John downed more scotch. And more scotch. And more scotch. And it wasn’t because he was trying to push Sherlock from his brain, no. Because that wouldn’t have worked anyway: Sherlock was everywhere. _I am human and I need to be loved/Just like everybody else does_. Of course he did. Why had John questioned that? Sherlock had a more powerful need to be loved than almost anyone John knew. Not to be liked: to be understood, to be cherished. He needed people to be patient with him, to take the time to navigate his quirks and outbursts. He needed John. That much was clear. But John wasn’t always sure, exactly, what Sherlock needed him for.

Somewhere in between “Accept Yourself” and “Girl Afraid” the remainder of the scotch disappeared, and John sought more from a stash he’d kept high on a shelf when he’d last lived at 221B. Still there. Alcohol had never been Sherlock’s intoxicant of choice. He was good and drunk now, and disconnected thoughts kept flitting through his brain, in between images of him and Sherlock, running down alleys, tumbling into fights, running back to Baker Street, laughing as they burst into the front hallway. He couldn’t grasp the thread, couldn’t resolve all the sensation into meaning, into a solid revelation, but he knew there was something there, something he was failing, in his blurry state, to understand. _Fifteen minutes with you/I wouldn’t say no_ / _People see no worth in you/But I do_.

Footfalls came up the stairs, slow and heavy. He didn’t think it could be Sherlock, who usually bounded up the flights like an Irish setter. But Sherlock it was, and he stood in the doorway for a long moment, staring at John as he took in the sound. “The Smiths.”

“Wait, you know the Smiths?” John looked up to scrutinize Sherlock. “I wasn’t aware you acknowledged the existence of music after 1895.”

Sherlock stood, swaying a little. Listening. Singing, under his breath. _He knew the lyrics_? “You were a fan?”

“In another life.”

“Another life? What other life?”

“Before you knew me. Not…not very long before.”

“Oh.” The dark days. That’s how John thought of those lost years, the blank gap in the timeline of Sherlock’s line they talked around, except when Mycroft called John to tell him he thought it was a danger night. Except when they ran out of cases, and John started trailing Sherlock whenever he left the flat, making sure he wasn’t off to his usual haunts, watching for any sketchy characters hanging around or quick transactions in alleyways. Sherlock knew, of course: Sherlock always knew. But just having John there seemed to be enough to stop him from doing anything stupid. Most of the time, anyway.

If you were going to do hard drugs, this was decent music to do it to: John had to concede that. Sherlock’s unreadable expression worried him, though. “I can turn it off, if you—”

“No.” Sherlock waved away the offer and came all the way in, striding over to his chair. “I—enjoy it. I’d forgotten. I don’t listen to them anymore.” He sat, taking off his gloves. “But I’m glad you do. It’s nice.”

John watched him. Was it regret he was getting? Nostalgia? They weren’t far apart, and he was no Sherlock Holmes. He couldn’t tell what emotions this was bringing up. He never could tell that with Sherlock, even after all these years.

 _Good times for a change/ See the life I’ve had/Can make a good man turn bad._ Sherlock caught John’s eye and frowned. John’s attempts to deduce Sherlock always elicited the same expression. Sherlock was never comfortable being the subject of his own methods, and countered, as usual, with a question of his own. “You liked them when you were younger, I take it?”

“I did, yeah.” John leaned back into his chair. “Saw them once, at Brixton Academy. Harry helped sneak me in.”

“I thought you two never got on.”

“Only times we did were when she was helping me do something dangerous or illegal. Think she always hoped I’d do something rebellious enough to take the pressure off her, someday. But I was never that exciting.”

Sherlock smirked. “You’re certainly more exciting now. Though you’d never know it from your sweaters.”

They sat without speaking as the record spun into silence. Those haunting last lyrics— _please, please, please, let me get what I want/This time_ —hung in the air as they both avoided looking at one another. After a minute John started to rise, but Sherlock waved him off, standing up to take the record off the player. “You’re drunk. Greg wouldn’t appreciate you breaking his record player simply because you’d had too much of your emergency supply of scotch.”

John sighed, sinking back on the sofa. “Fine. But can we put something else on, please? You can choose. There’s a whole box of records—” He pointed his finger in what he thought was a helpful direction, though the room kept spinning. “There.”

Sherlock obliged, leafing through the stack. He pulled one from the pile, and John recognized it instantly: _Louder Than Bombs_. So he really did care for the Smiths, then. Even though, as the record started to play, as Sherlock settled back in his chair, he looked bereft, as though he were thinking of something lost, something gone, and very far away.

 _Oh yes, you can kick me/And you can punch me/And you can break my face/But you won’t change the way I feel_.

“Sherlock? You okay?”

“Yeah.” But he didn’t look fine. And he wasn’t cracking jokes about John’s inebriated state, or jumping around like his feet were on fire, or changing the subject every ten seconds. This was melancholy. This was like—John bit his lip. This felt like those long days after Sherlock found out about Irene Adler. This felt like someone reminiscing about an old lover. It may have been heroin alone: but John doubted that, somehow. Sherlock hadn’t been a lone wolf in those days—his homeless network and his comfort even now in London’s drug dens testified to that. Had he been with someone, back in those days? Had the drugs knocked down the walls he’d built for himself about relationships, about love: or had they even existed, then?

He didn’t know if Sherlock had ever dated anyone, or if he’d ever had sex, with a woman or a man. He’d witnessed Sherlock’s relationship with Irene Adler, of course, but that had been uncategorizable, had fallen outside all of the definitions John understood for attraction and connection. He wasn’t sure “sexual” was the word for it. He wasn’t sure there _was_ a word for it.

( _And is there a word for you and Sherlock_? _Not romantic, not sexual, but completely codependent, tied together and immersed in each other’s lives in every way_?)

He shook the intrusive thoughts from his head. He’d always wondered about the rules Sherlock set for himself, about their reasoning and bounds. Sherlock was insistent on abstaining from sex and often even from food, but the loophole he left for drugs was conspicuous. It altered his mental processes positively, he always claimed: but couldn’t sex do that, John thought? As could, well, proper nutrients?

 _My only weakness is a list of crime/My only weakness is well, never mind, never mind._ John pushed up onto his elbows. Sherlock was still motionless in his chair. “Sherlock.” Nothing. “ _Sherlock_.”

Sherlock finally looked over, his cool blue eyes cutting across the room. John swallowed. “Is this okay for you? I mean—does it remind you of—” His tongue tripped over his words. “Look, you know what I mean. If you listened to this back then, I know it has to be hard to hear. So we don’t have to play it, you know. If it puts you in a—a bad place.”

Sherlock didn’t take his eyes off John’s face. “It’s not entirely a bad place. Though I suppose that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

They looked at each other a long time, and John fought the urge to stumble across the room, to take Sherlock’s hand and tell him everything was okay. He was grateful, suddenly, that they weren’t next to each other on this sofa. He remembered all too well their proximity on his stag night. How they kept falling against each other, how he’d reached out to put his hand on Sherlock’s thigh like it was the most natural thing in the world. And it was, frankly. It hadn’t seemed strange to him until the next morning, when he’d sobered up. Only then did he go back over the night in his mind, hoping there was nothing he’d been too drunk to remember saying, or doing. _Like what_? That little voice in his head piped up to ask. _What, precisely, are you so afraid of_?

He hated the look on Sherlock’s face. He hated this unhappiness, this despondence he so rarely saw, and he wanted to take it away. But maybe that was the problem. Perhaps he couldn’t. And perhaps—his hand shook a little as he tipped the glass of scotch to his lips again—perhaps he was standing in the way of Sherlock getting what he really wanted, what he needed. Perhaps he was a substitute for the real relationship Sherlock needed, the relationship he wouldn’t allow himself. Perhaps—perhaps John was only holding Sherlock back. Keeping him from something more; from something lasting, and intimate in the way Sherlock deserved.

Sherlock stood and came over to the sofa, taking the glass from John’s suddenly limp hand. “You’ve had enough, John.” He allowed his hand to rest, for only a moment, on John’s hair, and then pulled it back. “I’m sorry about Mary, you know. I never said it, but—I’m sure this can’t be easy for you. I do know that.”

John gazed up at him. _Oh, shit_. His fingers twitched, and his heart began to pound, because he knew this feeling. He’d had this feeling in pubs and bars on dates gone well, after long dinners with too much wine and drunken picnics on holiday. He knew that itch and that desire, and he knew, suddenly, that he wanted to pull Sherlock Holmes down onto this couch more than he’d wanted anything in his life, wanted to kiss him with abandon and feel all the curves of that sharp body and give in, at last, to this ambiguous tension that had always stretched out between them. He wanted it, and yet he couldn’t have it, because it would ruin all that they were. And Sherlock—Sherlock couldn’t want this. Sherlock had told them, their first night together, that he didn’t want this. But maybe John could help him figure out what he did want. Because whatever they had here: it wasn’t enough. Sherlock was human too. He needed someone he could connect with in every way. Whatever John was feeling now—whatever scotch-induced infatuation had taken hold of him—it would be gone by the morning. And then he would consider the problem clearly. The problem of Sherlock, and who in this world could give him all the things he needed, could bring down the walls John had never cracked.

“John. _John_.” John opened his eyes blearily, not even realizing he’d closed them, not even realizing that at some point Sherlock had turned off the record player. So that whole runaway train of thought had taken place with his eyes closed, then. Probably for the best. You didn’t want to make eye contact with Sherlock Holmes when you were harboring thoughts you’d rather he not deduce.

“Let’s get you to bed.” Sherlock’s arms were under him now, hooking beneath his shoulders, pulling him up. John longed to return the embrace, but left his arms hanging at his sides. _Nothing_ , he thought. _Do nothing_. Sherlock hauled him like a dead weight towards the doorway, and then stopped, grunting as he hoisted John up. “If you’re not going to assist me, there’s no conceivable way I’m getting you up those stairs. So it’s either the sofa or my bed. Your choice. I’ll take whatever you don’t.”

John blinked. “That’s…particularly nice of you.”

“It’s only because you’re a terror when you haven’t had a good night’s sleep. Maybe more than I am on most mornings.” Sherlock put his hand on John’s chest, steadying him as he started to sway. “So, the bed then? If you’re capable of dragging your feet there?”

“Why don’t we both sleep there?” The words were out of John’s mouth before he could stop them, and he felt Sherlock stiffen. “I mean, I don’t want to kick you out of your bed. And it’s big, innit? Big…nice…bed.” He yawned. “Beds are good. Let’s both—to bed.” He pointed towards the bedroom, stumbling forward, and Sherlock let him lead on. Sherlock let him fall onto the sheets, and John rolled onto his side, pressing his face into the pillow, because it smelled so much like Sherlock, and Sherlock mustn’t see. Sherlock mustn’t see any of this, because John would sleep it off. It would be gone. But right now, Sherlock’s weight was settling beside him. Right now, he felt warm and sleepy and secure. Right now, he could reach out and touch Sherlock—but he didn’t. He wouldn’t. He would stay Sherlock’s steadfast friend, and he would forget all of this, push it, as though it had never happened, from his troubled mind.


	2. I Just Couldn't Ask

John woke up with a blinding hangover and the uncomfortable sensation of finding himself in a strange bed. But the bedroom was familiar: he’d been in here before. He knew these sheets. And he knew, as he rolled over, that he would never live this down.

“All right,” he yawned, “make all the jokes you—” He stopped. Sat up. There was no one there. He was in Sherlock’s bed, but Sherlock Holmes was nowhere to be found.

John couldn’t be too surprised: Sherlock was certainly the type to run out on a one-night stand. And probably the type to get bored of cuddling once he’d gleaned all the relevant physiological data he could from it. Though of course they hadn’t—had they? John replayed the hazy scenes from the night before in his mind, swallowing his unease. There had been fleeting touches. Insinuations. But then, there always were, weren’t there? It didn’t mean anything. They were close. John had been drunk. Friends flirted, after all. Friends sometimes shared a bed. It didn’t have to mean more than that. It _didn’t_ mean more than that.

“Sherlock.” He cleared his throat, which felt like sandpaper. “ _Sherlock_.” Silence greeted his croak. He sighed, tossing aside the covers and stumbling into the kitchen to seek water. Sherlock wasn’t there, either. John drained a glass of water, and then another, and another, trying to match the volume of the scotch he’d downed last night. It was hopeless. He’d need more than hydration to battle the pounding in his skull.

He found his phone under the sofa cushions, intending to beg Mrs. Hudson via text (yelling was not an option) to pick him up some provisions from Speedy’s. But there was already a message on his screen: _On a case. Don’t wait for me_.—SH

John stared at it for a moment before the glow started to worsen his headache. Don’t wait for what? To leave the flat? To do something with his day other than mope about his imploded marriage? He groaned, throwing the phone aside. He had, in fact, hoped that Sherlock might provide some distraction in the coming days, some fascinating case that knocked all the breath out of him and left him utterly unable to think about anything related to Mary, custody arrangements, or the current state of his life and romantic relationships. Instead Sherlock had run off on his own, and John was left alone again. Naturally.

 

* * *

 

He cleaned the bathroom. He cleaned the living room. He alphabetized his records. All of this, of course, after Mrs. Hudson had brought him a thoughtfully chosen and extremely effective hangover kit, while telling him, of course, that she couldn’t be expected to do this all the time, that it wasn’t her job, that even a housekeeper wouldn’t do half the things for John and Sherlock she was asked to do. He did all of these tasks, and Sherlock didn’t come back. Night fell, and Sherlock still hadn’t come back. So John put on The Smiths again— _The Queen is Dead_ , this time—but skipped the scotch, making himself a nice cup of tea instead.

It wasn’t unusual. He kept telling himself that. It wasn’t unusual for Sherlock to disappear for a day or two at a time, sometimes more, and he had texted John, after all. But ever since Reichenbach, John’s skin started to crawl when he hadn’t set eyes on Sherlock for more than twenty-four hours. He stopped believing Sherlock would come back. _Had_ come back, when all logic told John he never would. All reason, all evidence, told him to let Sherlock go. And yet: he hadn’t. There was a reason he’d gone to Sherlock’s grave so often, to ask him to return. It was because he believed that Sherlock could. It was because he couldn’t fathom a world in which Sherlock wasn’t there, wasn’t out there somewhere, having adventures, solving impossible cases. But a world where Sherlock ran away, leaving John behind: that he could imagine all too well. He’d lived in that world for two years. He never wanted to return to it again.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock wasn’t back by the next morning, or that afternoon. John made himself go out, do the shopping, do some errands, until he ran out of things to do. Walking back to Baker Street, worry crept into his gut. What if Sherlock wasn’t on a case at all? What if he was on the kind of “case” he used as cover-up when he wanted to hang around the drug dens, get a taste of his old life?

He’d relapsed, since John had known him: of course he had. But never for long. Never like the old days. At least, John didn’t think so. But he hadn’t been there, and John and Mycroft and Molly, everyone who had: they’d spared him the details. They knew it would hurt him, to hear how low Sherlock had fallen. They knew he would worry: and here he was, worrying. Sherlock hadn’t looked okay, the other night. Not a bit okay. And maybe the music—the memories they stirred—maybe, just maybe—

He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs as he jogged up to the door to 221B. Something so small couldn’t set Sherlock off—could it? Sherlock was a multidimensional puzzle, and John was some key missing pieces. Mycroft wouldn’t tell him anything—not unless it served his own ends—and he and Molly had never been close, but Greg would. Greg would give him the whole story, no holds barred, if he wanted it. He’d ask him, tonight.

 

* * *

 

John and Greg met up every once in a while to grab a pint and jaw about recent cases and department gossip, about all the juicy deductions Sherlock made on the job but never wanted to talk about after he’d used them to embarrass his subjects and shock everyone else into silence. They frequented a pub near headquarters, but not too close, so that Greg could speak freely on the sex scandals of Scotland Yard and complain to John about what dolts his incompetent higher-ups were.

“You’re a better man than me, Greg.” John raised a glass. “You’re doing a public service, putting up with all that bullshit.”

Greg arched an eyebrow. “And you’re not? They should pin a medal on you for handling Sherlock.”

John shifted. Handling. Yeah. Not likely. “At least he doesn’t make me do paperwork. Well, not often. Well, I say not often…” He cleared his throat, not sure how to go on. “Listen, Greg. I wanted to ask you…back when you first met Sherlock. When he was, ah—”

Greg cut through his delicacy. “A junkie?”

“Yes. Back then. Could you tell, when he was high? Or did he mostly maintain?”

Greg shook his head. “Nah, he was too out of control for that. He kept it together for a bit, sometimes, but he always got himself worked up and dropped the charade. It’s why everyone in the department hates him, if you want the truth. He couldn’t stop himself from saying whatever terrible things came into his head. He’s a paragon of self-restraint these days, compared to who he used to be.” Greg took a sip of his drink. “God, am I relieved all that’s past. You can’t imagine, John. You really can’t. ”

He could imagine it all too well. Sherlock, strung out and thin, raving at the walls. Hell, he did that last bit stone-cold sober all the time. John grasped his glass and pushed the image of Sherlock with a needle in his arm from his mind. “And what was it? Heroin and cocaine, mostly?”

“Those were his drugs of choice, sure, but Mycroft made sure he couldn’t get his hands on those, sometimes. Cut off supply lines, intimidated kingpins, that sort of thing. He stopped, though. Realized Sherlock would turn to whatever he could get, or cook something up in the lab, with Molly covering for him. So Mycroft started referring him to drug dealers instead. Making sure that whatever he did, it was pure. Making sure they wouldn’t sell him too much at a time. I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t like busting him would have solved anything. So I started putting him on more cases. Thought it would be a distraction. And it was the best thing for him, until you came along.”

“Look, you’ve known him a lot longer than I have. Do you think he’d ever relapse? Not just a slip, or a binge. A real—” John hesitated on the word “fall.” “Do you think he’d ever go back—to how he was?”

“He won’t while you’re around.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Greg slammed back the rest of his pint. “Just…trust me on this. He’s okay as long as you’re there. And you’re not planning on going anywhere, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“And you and Mary—it’s over? Really?”

“Really.” Maybe it should sting more, he thought. But nothing could gut him like that night in the empty house, that night Sherlock revealed Mary’s deception in the most dramatic way possible. He did love a show. “It’s been over a long time. We just got around to doing something about it.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, John. I am.” Greg gave him a sideways look. “But maybe it’ll be all right, yeah? Now that you’re back at Baker Street and everything?”

John blinked. “Well, yeah, it’s good to be back, but—well, it doesn’t solve everything, does it? I’m still single at 45. Can’t say I’m looking forward to jumping back into the London dating pool. It didn’t go that well the first time around, you might recall.”

“Well, not until Sherlock—” Greg cleared his throat. “Sorry. It won’t be that bad.” He signaled for another drink. “Though I admit living with Sherlock Holmes isn’t the best way to maintain any other relationships.”

John chuckled, trying to evade his discomfort. _Any other relationships?_ “Greg, you know we’re not—I mean, we’ve never—”

“Never?”

“Never. Wait, you seriously don’t know that?”

“Sure I do. I mean—so are you going to move out, then? After a month or two?”

“Why would I?”

“Well, you can afford a place of your own, can’t you? If he’s just helping you out, giving you a place to crash, there’s no reason you would stay very long, would you?”

“I…” John laughed. “What are you implying, exactly?”

“Nothing!” Greg tipped his glass back innocently, but he wore an impish grin. “Look, it’s just— _never_?”

“Oh my god. Never, Greg. Truly, never.”

“Because I’m just saying—look, I know it’s ruined any time he opens his mouth, but that is one attractive man. And you do spend a lot of time together. And I could understand crashing on a mate’s couch while you get your life back together, but moving back in—well, you can’t blame me for asking the question, can you?”

He couldn’t. He couldn’t because he’d been asking himself the same question since he moved back in. As much as he’d wanted to believe that drunk John and sober John had little in common when it came to their attraction to Sherlock, his yearning for the detective hadn’t subsided in the light of day. Not entirely, anyway. “It’s not as though—okay, it’s crossed my mind. But he isn’t interested in any of—well, anything. You know that. And even if he were—”

Greg cocked his head. “Isn’t interested? You don’t really buy that, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

Greg set down his glass, suddenly serious. “Jesus. I thought he would have told you.”

“Told me what?”

“There was—” He sighed. “There was a man. Went around with Sherlock, back in the day. They were thick as thieves, at least when they were out of their minds. They were together, John. Maybe there were others, I don’t know. But don’t be fooled. Sherlock’s no monk. I—well, I don’t want to go into detail, but—”

John held up his hand. “I don’t want to know.” And he didn’t. Not just because it saddened him, to think that Sherlock’s last relationship, maybe his only relationship, had been conducted under the influence of drugs, but because it was none of his business. Sherlock had obfuscated with John about not being interested in sex or relationships, sure. But he must have had his reasons. And John wasn’t about to violate their trust. He never had before.

Greg stood, pulling on his coat. “I’ve got to get some sleep tonight—this Frasier business has got me knackered. But listen—if you ever need to talk—about Sherlock or Mary or any of it—”

“I know. Thanks, Greg.” John forced a smile. “I’ll let you know when I figure out what it is we’ve got to talk about.”

Greg clapped him on the back. “Don’t worry about it. Or him. He’s a bastard, but he loves you, John. That much I know.”

He left John on his barstool, staring into his glass. _No, he doesn’t_ , he thought. Not enough. Or not the way he should love someone, the way he himself deserved to be loved. What if all of this—the drugs, the crazy cases, the running himself into a fever and shooting the walls when he was bored—was because he wouldn’t let himself be with someone he truly loved, someone who fulfilled him in a way John couldn’t? Because if John did—they’d be together. It would have happened. Sherlock would be calmer, happier. Why hadn’t he seen that, long ago?

He knocked back the rest of his lager. Stood. Decided, then and there, that he would help guide the emotional development of Sherlock Holmes. After all, he’d been doing that all along, hadn’t he? Sherlock pretended to be Spock, but John knew his feelings ran deeper than that, had seen the cracks in the façade. He could help Sherlock. Help him find someone—find someone he could stand without the drugs, someone he wanted to be around. Someone who had whatever it was John lacked.

 _And what happens to you, then_? The troublemaking voice in his head wouldn’t shut up. _Are you going to live upstairs while Sherlock lives in romantic bliss in the rooms below? That’s not awkward at all, is it_?

He shrugged on his coat, heading for the door. Of course he’d move out. If Sherlock found someone—he bit his tongue, because he’d been thinking “someone else”—well, then he’d go. He’d rebuild his life somewhere else, and he and Sherlock would stay friends, and partners in their casework. They’d managed it with Mary, hadn’t they? Except for the shooting. And Sherlock deciding to hang around in crack dens. And—okay, so they hadn’t managed it well at all.

He strode out into a mild London evening, his brain abuzz. How would he even talk to Sherlock about any of this? How would he convince him to move forward in his own life, his own relationships? It wasn’t as simple as offering to play wingman to get a friend back on the scene again. This was Sherlock. It would take—it would take—

Something on the plywood wall he was passing caught his eye. A flyer, outlined in black and white. He stopped. Stared. And then laughed, glancing around to make sure this wasn’t some kind of prank on Sherlock’s part, some mind game to test John’s sense of reality. He caught no sign of the Belstaff whisking around a corner, though, which meant this was for real. An uncanny coincidence. He ripped the flyer from the wall, and stuffed it in his coat. Now he had a plan. A road map. Tomorrow night, then. He'd find Sherlock somebody to love.


End file.
